zamindar

• zemindar
• zumeendar

From Hindi ज़मींदार (zamīndār), from Persian زمین‌دار‎ (zamin-dâr).

• (UK) IPA^(key): /zəˈmiːndɑː/

zamindar (plural zamindars)

1. (India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, now historical) An Indian landowner who collected local taxes and paid them to the British government.
   • 2004, Khushwant Singh, Burial at Sea, Penguin 2014, p. 6:

     Indian princes, zamindars and industrialists engaged him as their counsel and paid him whatever he asked for as fees.

   • 2008, Amitav Ghosh, Sea of Poppies, Penguin 2015, p. 39:

     Thus it happened that the approach of the Ibis was witnessed by Raja Neel Rattan Halder, the zemindar of Raskhali, who was on board the palatial barge with his eight-year-old son and a sizeable retune of attendants.

   • 2017, Sunil Khilnani, Incarnations, Penguin 2017, p. 402:

     The power of the zamindars, who were mainly Brahmin or Rajput, was challenged in a series of peasant movements between 1919 and 1921, when Charan Singh was in his late teens.

• zemindarate